Friday, October 23, 2015

Some exciting news to share before I get onto the race report from the Victoria 8K over the long Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.---------------------------------------------------------------------------1 - I am mostly moved in with my roommate Brendan. Living with a professional triathlete certainly is inspiring. Aside from the frequent feverish boring talk on light cardio related topics, Brendan would often bake these amazing recipes virtually from scratch, from his big white textbook, NY best seller - Joy of Cooking. Yummy treats like pumpkin pies, apple crisp, homemade pizza, and I threaten to "v"-log it to provide a means of supplemental income for him. Still haven't acted on it though...2 - On top of my morning bike courier breakfast deliveries, with huge help from Brendan I've managed to picked up another moonlight job as a Spin Instructor at the local bike shop Westpoint Multisport. I've survived teaching (and participating) in 4 brutal classes so far and enjoy it a lot! With minimized time for training, my workouts have been a bit more focused. The same can't be said for that still odd water exercise called swimming.3 - A special shout out to Jon Heinz, who is currently in India. He will be our third and final roommate when he returns to the country, whenever that might be. In the meantime, he kindly requested that I blog more frequently for strictly selfish reasons. That is so that he can keep tabs of my training and make sure I don't get ahead of him. Good to know there's at least one reader of mine out there. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Is an 8K road race even worth blogging about? Shameless to admit, sure it is! I've never actually ran a distance less than 10k officially (by officially I mean when there's verifiable public proof i.e. online chip-timed results). Given if I finish, 8k was going be an another distance to put in the PB books for this year. My only obstacles are: - the 6-hour time cut-off, - and ensuring no kids in their early teens photo-bomb my pictures. It's totally okay when older men and ladies beat me, but I think the kids need to earn their spot on the ladder pecking order if they want it enough to beat me. :P There are the classic half and full marathon distances as well, it's ironic that the regular full marathoners get less time than us 8Kers with only 5:29 to finish or else they need to go to the early start.

Katrina, Eric and I opted for an afternoon ferry to get onto the Island. Jen should had joined us too, but unfortunately caught a bad bug leading up to the race and smartly decided to take some recovery time instead. We visited Theresa's new place and had a nice pre-race pasta with her. I can conclude that a dietary nutritionist certainly has all the kitchen gadgets imaginable. I also re-united with our Canada House roommate from Sweden this year, Karmen. It's funny because now I've bumped into or seen all of our fabulous housemates since Sweden (Jen, Hector, Claire, Alyssa, and now Karmen). Talk about a small triathlon community here in Canada. Karmen and Jim was just the most amazing hosts for my stay and only a short jog to the start line on Belleville Street. Super runners Jen and Mike have told me that this 8K course is not exactly the fastest with some minor hills to negotiate. Their take-home tip was to approach it like it was a 10K race. It's a brutal start only if you compare yourself to the later risers doing the marathon. 7:15am for us. I wore arm warmers in 12 degrees C and thought I could do without them.

The course starts near the finish area, westbound on Belleville Street, a few zig zaggy turns for the first kilometre and smooths out on Dallas Road. The turnaround at Beacon Hill Park is just before Cook Street with a gentle hill.Overall it's still a fast out and back course that warps around the scenic oceanfront.I channeled the "so-smooth" running style mentioned by the commentators when streaming some of the Kona action the day before.Interesting pace work for an 8k, and nothing like the super conservative starts of a typical marathon. Everyone near the front wave went out hard during the first two kilometres. Suicidal pace going sub 3:30s. The pace settles quickly and the gap opens and the pack thins into linear fashion by only 3K for me. I was running in the 3:30s to 3:40s per K.

Hearing Steve King's voice at the finish was nice. It wasn't pretty but I squeaked out a sub 29 minutes. Luckily, I did manage to win my *gender* age-group (the lead girl in this age group absolutely crushed it). It was a lot of fun. Slowpoke long course athlete posing in the shorter distance. I think I could had easily held on for another 2k if it was a 10K race. But, I still need to do some serious intervals if I want to figure out a clue to get any faster.

Eric and I got to relax and chill for the rest of the morning and cheer on Katrina and the rest of the marathoners.Thanks for reading. Shameless again, I just couldn't refuse a cheap entry and I'm looking forward to the Rock and Roll Half this weekend. :DHappy fall running!